Coconut Thumbprints

The more I dive into baking cookies, the more I am in awe of how many different creations are possible. Aside from flavors, there are tons of shapes and textures possible to make cookie recipes look entirely different from one another. And as I predicted, the Coconut Thumbprints from Dessert Person have proven to be a hit in our house.

One reason I’ve been loving all the cookie recipes is because I often have most of the ingredients already. All I needed for this recipe was the finely shredded dried coconut. I wasn’t able to get unsweetened coconut—with the times we live in, I was lucky to find the only sweetened version they had at the grocery store.

For the most part, the dough itself seemed to be very similar to a shortbread cookie dough with the addition of coconut. Like Claire recommended, I used my thumb to make the dip in each cookie (hence the name of the recipe).

I highly suggest baking these cookies on a silicone cookie sheet; I only had one silicone sheet, but I can’t deny the productivity of placing two cookie sheets on upper and lower third oven racks when the option is available in a recipe. Unfortunately the ones that baked on a cookie sheet with just parchment paper pretty much burned on the bottom. The cookies on the silicone turned out perfect.

This was another recipe where I started feeling confused about the caramel sauce. I’ve made caramel for a couple other recipes now, and every one of them has been slightly different. Perhaps it just depends on what will balance the other part of the recipe best? Here’s how the other caramel sauces I’ve made so far vary from one another (some had a fruit addition for that specific recipe, but you get the idea):

• Rice Pudding Cake with Mango Caramel: sugar, mango, heavy cream, unsalted caramel, kosher salt

• Pineapple and Pecan Upside-Down Cake: butter, pineapple, packed light brown sugar, dark rum, unsalted butter, kosher salt

• Coconut Thumbprints: granulated sugar, light corn syrup, unsweetened full-fat coconut milk, coconut oil, kosher salt

I expected the caramel for this recipe to be thick so it would easily sit in the thumbprint of the cookie (it looked very gooey in the picture of the book), but it ended up spilling out of the thumbprint impressions for many of the cookies (not the picture-perfect look I was going for!). I put them in the fridge, but that wasn’t very helpful—it basically made the fat contents create a layer at the top of each cookie. Either way, after letting these cookies sit for a while, the caramel set up alright.

These cookies did not last long in our house, and for good reason. Like many new flavors I’m trying with this project, coconut shavings have not been a particular favorite of mine; but with these cookies, I’m willing to make an exception. The flavor was smooth and perfectly balanced with the caramel, all while having a nice crunch. I set these cookies out for our family dinner night, and they were gone by the time everyone left. Overall, this is a simple, fast cookie to make. Next time, I want to see if I can get the caramel sauce to thicken more; but I will definitely be making these again.

Claire has not made these cookies yet on her YouTube channel, but I'll post when she does!